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Saturday, 31 August 2013

You didn’t know that Rupert Murdoch was a US Citizen? After
today’s toe-curlingly over the top Sun
front page, it’s something you can’t avoid. There, in large letters, is a DEATH
NOTICE for The Special Relationship. But is the relationship between the UK and
USA really that special? And have
successive Presidents always defended our interests, as if they were their own?

The answer is, no they haven’t, and here’s six examples. As
Rupe’s downmarket troops have cited the friendship of Winshton and Franklin
Roosevelt as the start of their golden era of UK/US cooperation, I’ll start with
the immediate aftermath of that, as World War 2 ended. Britain, at this stage,
was in a parlous financial situation. The last thing we needed was for an ally
to withdraw its support.

And that is exactly (1)
what the USA did, in September 1945, as President Truman cancelled Lend-Lease: this
concept did not just involve military supplies, but also foodstuffs, road and
railway equipment, and medical supplies. Anything still in transit had to be
paid for, albeit at a discount. The USA compounded their playing hardball when
asked for a loan to tide the UK economy over.

There was a lag between an economy geared to a war footing,
and one able to concentrate on civilian goods, especially those which could be
exported, and thus help alleviate the country’s indebtedness. Keynes was
dispatched to Washington DC to try and negotiate a loan for this purpose. (2) The US treasury demanded that
Sterling be made fully convertible as a condition of granting the loan.

The UK Government complied, and the loan was used up in a
matter of days, as those who had hoarded unconvertible Sterling during the war
years eagerly exchanged it for US Dollars at the rate of $4.02 to the Pound.
The USA had caused its best buddy to become yet more indebted. True, the
Marshall Plan arrived later, but the damage had been done.

Ronnie (5) didn’t
even bother to tell us when he launched
an invasion of Grenada, which was, and remains, a part of the British Commonwealth
which recognises Elizabeth II as its head of state. And Dubya Bush (6), also mentioned by the Sun, would have been more than happy to go off to Iraq without us
in 2003. So when the Sun tells of
a “special relationship”, one has to
ask: what “special relationship”?

Not that Murdoch’s
papers will be telling their readers about all of that, of course.

The bleatings of Nile “Chauncey”
Gardiner at the bear pit that is Telegraph
blogs have passed before my examination before, notably when, in June, he
failed to do his homework and asserted that JFK had
given his Ich Bin Ein Berliner speech
at the Brandenburg Gate, which he could not have done, as that location was
on the other side of the wall, in East Berlin.

Readers are supposed to believe that the Obama presidency
has “led from behind” on Syria, then
told that airstrikes will make no difference. Given that a large majority of
citizens doesn’t want to get involved at all, and that the only other
alternative would be a ground invasion, the Prez has judged things reasonably
well. Gardiner is just whingeing for the sake of it (because Obama is a
Democrat).

Never mind, perhaps he could do better on the Stateside
angles? Sadly not, as “Why
a nervous Hillary Clinton is remarkably silent on Syria” shows. Yeah,
she’s supposed to be the Democrats’ front runner for 2016, and she’s not said
anything about Syria. There is a very good explanation for this: she is no
longer in office, and John Kerry is. So she’s leaving the Syria interventions
to him.

The obedient hackery of the legendarily foul mouthed Paul
Dacre is generally at the front of the queue when there is BBC bashing to be
done. And, if there are also accusations of covert surveillance and dirty
tricks levelled against the Corporation’s management, one might expect the Mail to be in there like a shot. But on
this occasion, the paper has been rather selective in its coverage.

What we know, and what is not controversial, is that the
Beeb’s head of
Human Resources Lucy Adams is to leave next March, after five years’
service. As she is departing of her own accord, no severance payment will be
due (the Mail erroneously leers “she won’t get a golden goodbye”). What
is also known is that Ms Adams has been involved in controversy with the NUJ.

The BBC hotly disputes the allegations, and Ms Adams is also
instructing lawyers, so the whole thing could drag on for some time. But why
has the Daily Mail – which normally
would be all over anything that could be used to paint the Corporation in a bad
light – not
mentioned the alleged email surveillance? Well, anyone who has been given
access to those systems in large corporate may have a good idea why.

When you sign up to using corporate email systems, and
perhaps even at login time, notices will be displayed prominently telling users
of the various terms and conditions to which they must adhere – on pain,
generally, of disciplinary action. Nothing that could reflect badly on the host
organisation, nothing that could be classed as bullying or harassment, and
nothing for personal gain can be sent.

And users are also notified that emails may be monitored. It’s
the company’s system: they don’t need to get a warrant or call the cops, they
can just decide to check what you’re sending and receiving. Having observed
this in action over the years – including seeing people sent down the road for
misuse – I can confirm that monitoring does go on. So I am not surprised at
what happened at the BBC.

Equally, I would not be surprised if the reason the Mail was so coy in its reporting of this
story was because the Dacre empire uses that kind of practice to keep tabs on
the inhabitants of Northcliffe House. I make no accusation here, but can
remember what one Mail staffer told
Nick Davies: “It’s fear versus good money”.
If there is a better reason for not kicking the Beeb, I’d love to hear it.

But he has made sure that anyone who was paying attention to
him, rather than last night’s momentous events, knew that he was the one doing
the deed out of principle, but not necessarily the same principle that saw him
embracing Lynton Crosby on the occasion of Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson
being foisted upon the unfortunate inhabitants of London for a second term.

So why did he do it? “Miliband
was governed by narrow political interests – not those of Syrian children”.
Yes, when in doubt, WHY WON’T WE THINK ABOUT THE CHILDREN? As with LouiseMensch, the impression is given that lobbing a few cruise missiles at Syria
from a ship standing off the coast is any more than a futile gesture to try and
keep the politicians’ spirits up.

And, talking of politicians, what about those elsewhere in
the Middle East? “Israel will have
watched the spectacle of British politicians stating events in the middle-east
are not their concern”. Israel stopped depending on us after Ike told all
the participants in the Suez campaign to desist, on pain of his not securing
re-election. Had it been the USA not being bothered, Israel would be concerned.
As it’s us, they aren’t.

“Britain is now an
isolationist nation” bleats Hodges, but this is crap. We don’t want to make
things worse than they already are. Then he continues bleating about what Mil
The Younger is alleged to have done, as if he was a ringside spectator, which
by this time in his Labour career he definitely was not. Miliband is accused of
changing his mind, and giving Young Dave all manner of undertakings.

To be able to know all of this when you’re not party to the discussions is truly remarkable. But Hodges’ conclusions are not: it’s all
about Miliband acting in his “narrow
political interests”. So he is upset mainly because the leader of the
political party he joined so many years ago turns out to be ... a politician. Just like his beloved Tone.
Just like Pa Broon. And this is a resigning matter?

And so, like Perkins in Beyond The Fringe, Dan Hodges has
volunteered himself to make another futile gesture, turn himself into a
pointless sacrifice to a cause dear only to Himself Personally Now. Perhaps a
few of those who drift around the comments sewer at Tel blogs will applaud his principled stand. Most will not care
less, shrug their shoulders, and move on. As
Hodges should have done long ago.

On occasions like last night, Young Dave will have been
reassured to know that he could count on the support of one loyal Tory, even if
she now represents only the distant constituency of Manhattan Upmarket. Yes,
Louise Mensch (for it is she) has commanded “Listen to me, Twitter people”, because she knows everything that is
to be known about, well, any subject she chooses. So there.

Has she got news for us? Well, she thinks so

The UK and US, she has decided, should not “war on the side of the rebels”,
whatever that means. This is because there are “Islamists” in their midst, which as any fule kno is a failing only
of Islam, and not of other, more wonderful kinds of organised religion. So what
does this ultra-loyal Cameroon have to say about intervention, if we’re not
going to take sides?

Simples. “A targeted strike against Assad’s chemical
facilities would be right and just”. Er, says who? Where are these “chemical facilities”? Can anyone be sure
that none of them are in civilian areas? That could mean gassing an awful lot
more innocent people, were any of the stuff to go off as a result. Are they dispatched
from mobile launchers? Locating those before firing missiles could be fun,
then.

But she does know that we can just start military action,
providing the pesky Commons says so: “The
Royal Prerogative is used by the PM, with consent of Parliament, to wage war.
No international approval req[uired]”. There speaks someone who pretends to
know all about the Middle East, but has forgotten one very important four
letter word – Suez.

But one villain that Ms Mensch certainly hasn’t forgotten is
Mil The Younger, who, as per the Tory Party script, is “weak”: “Miliband looking
exceptionally weak after trying to face both ways on Syria. Playing politics
with the lives of the gassed”. Yes Louise, as opposed to playing politics
with the lives of hundreds of British service personnel who have recently come
home in coffins.

And Miliband is one politician with whom Ms Mensch clearly has
a problem: his victory in the contest to succeed Pa Broon, she has decided, is “revolting to stand against your own brother
for his life’s ambition”. I do hope she never finds out about the Brownlee
brothers, who regularly compete against one another, with one of them having to
come no higher than second as a result.

Still, Louise is nothing if not well read, so she can make
these earth-shattering decisions from a point of view so much more informed
than anyone she disagrees with. That means she reads, er, the thoughts of
Raheem “call me Ray” Kassam at Trending Central (a venture filleted
right HERE).
“Ray” likes “to get up the Left’s nose”. Ah, if only the Left would give the
witless SOB a sniff, eh?

And if only Louise
Mensch could face political reality once in a while.

After the intemperate
language hurled at Mil The Younger came the plainly nasty suggestion that,
if Labour were not to obediently toddle along after Young Dave and his jolly
good chaps, they would be “giving succour
to Assad”. There was a clear desperation in Government ranks, and so, when the vote was taken and
Cameron came up short, nobody should have been surprised.

And, while Cameron accepted his defeat with magnanimity,
others could not contain themselves: Michael “Oiky” Gove went berserk, his voice ascending the octaves before he
had to be instructed to calm himself. Then the blame game began: it was all
Labour’s fault really, because of what Tone and Big Al did on Iraq. And that is
total horseshit: there is nothing to be gained from our intervening.

Long serving Tory MPs such as Edward Leigh put the question:
what would we do by dropping bombs on Syria, other than add to the death toll?
The conflict there is already heavily influenced by other countries, with Iran
propping up Assad, and Saudi Arabia assisting some of the rebels (note that
there is no single, coherent group of rebels, and the same may now be true of
the Government side).

If Cameron, and anyone of like mind, wants to show their support
for the people of Syria, then there are far better ways to show it than stand
off the coast and launch cruise missiles into what is already a highly
combustible situation. The Prime Minister is a keen exponent of international
aid, so let’s see him get behind practical help for refugees: food, clothing, shelter and medical supplies
are all needed.

What Cameron needs to show is leadership, and at such times
the definition of that art by the economist and commentator J K Galbraith
should be required reading. “All of the
great leaders have had one characteristic in common: it was the willingness to
confront unequivocally the major anxiety of their people in their time. This,
and not much else, is the essence of leadership”.

Right now, Cameron is presiding over a sluggish economy and
over two and a half million unemployed. He talks of tackling the deficit, then
proposes spraying tens of millions up the wall bombing somewhere in the Middle
East. Some of his MPs, like Sarah Woolaston, who represents the Devon
constituency of Totnes, have sounded out their electorate, and their
major anxiety is clearly not attacking Syria.

Indeed, when she asked for voters to give their opinion on
the idea of military intervention, 53 were in favour, but 507 were not. Sarah
Woolaston voted against the
Government last night. Others in the Tory Party gave their support out of
loyalty to the Blue Team. But the message was clear: Cameron has failed the
basic test of leadership. He cannot blame anyone else for that but himself.

And those pointing at
something that happened ten years ago are just deluded.

Thursday, 29 August 2013

Some spin is so blatant that it leaves the impression that
its source is suffering some kind of delusional disconnect from reality, and that
has been the case today with our old friend, the loathsome Toby Young, whose
return to Telegraph blogs, after
having been given the boot by Rupe, was hailed as “triumphant”, rather than someone scratching round for work after
being unceremoniously sacked.

Tobes cannot, under any circumstances, admit that anyone to
the left of his beloved Michael “Oiky”
Gove is ever right, and so when Mil The Younger caused
Young Dave to abandon any thought of immediate military action against
Syria, this could not possibly mean that the Labour leader deserved any credit.
Tobes cannot go there: it is as if he’d been Ipcressed.

Perhaps Tobes hasn’t been paying attention, but most likely
is that he thought he could pull a fast one and nobody would notice. Then we
get more spin about the UN weapons inspectors, on the subject of which Tobes
manages not to notice that they have not yet reported back on their findings.
That is Miliband’s point. But Tobes is sure that “the Leader of the Opposition certainly doesn't look very statesmanlike”.

Once again, his colleague Iain Martin, who I would estimate
is some way to my right, has
scored the debate as a loss for both party leaders. Meanwhile, Toby Young
gives the impression that, despite his libertarian claims, he is throwing a
mardy strop because the rotten lefties won’t let his team go and stick their
bugle in the affairs of yet another Middle Eastern country.

Then, on top of that, he thinks his opinion matters, and that really is delusional.

Sometimes, the press can be suckers for the witterings of
those who pretend to know their subject, but turn out not to have a clue.
Today, the Independent has indulged
one such pundit, Autocar’s Hilton
Holloway, whose enthusiasm for the New Bus For London (NB4L), aka Boris Bus or
BozzaMaster, has led to some in the press concluding that he knows what he is
talking about.

Poor economics: New Bus For London

“On
the buses: Public transport is undergoing a technological transformation”
gushes Christopher Beanland, before getting the NB4L all wrong: “the Ulster-built buses have proved more of a
hit with tourists, who like the ‘hop on, hop off’ platforms on the Routemaster
replacements”. Where to start? They’re not a Routemaster replacement,
tourists aren’t fussed, and you can’t just hop on or off.

With this level of hype, it is no surprise that Holloway has
managed to get his foot in the door: “Personally
I think that after the Crossrail station at Tottenham Court Road is finished,
Oxford Street, Regent Street, Piccadilly and Park Lane could become a circular
trolley- bus route – using converted Boris Buses” he announced, which will
be a surprise to anyone at TfL, which has no such intention.

Sound economics: pair of Tatra T3s in Prague

And, as the man said, there’s more: “As urban populations swell, buses offer the best mix of affordability,
flexibility, and low investment for mass transport. They're essential for
budget travel because of the huge infrastructure costs – and, therefore, high fares – associated with new
undergrounds or trams”. A word
in your shell-like, Hilt: your grasp of transport economics ain’t making it.

The NB4L requires two crew members – as well as frequent
visits from the fare dodger hit squad – and yet it carries a maximum of 80
passengers. Even cities like Prague, which runs many tram routes with the venerable Tatra T3, doubles
them up into pairs with one driver. A T3 can carry more than an NB4L. So a pair
of them, with one crew member, has less
than a quarter of the staff costs.

Ultimate people mover: Siemens Combino Supra in Budapest

So much for “high
fares” associated with trams. And it gets worse for the Holloway
Weltanschauung: modern people movers, such as the Siemens Combino Supra
built for Budapest’s lines 4 and 6, can comfortably hoover up 400 punters,
which, given there is, once again, one crew member, makes their staff cost one-tenth
that of the BozzaMaster. And Hilt’s trolleybus conversion isn’t going to
happen.

The NB4L, in any case, is too heavy to carry its design load
(it should be able to take 87 passengers, but can only take 80). A trolleybus
conversion would make it yet heavier, and even more uneconomic. And the shaky
grasp of economic reality demonstrated by its most enthusiastic fan shows that
he doesn’t get why “everyone’s out of
step bar our Boris”.

Leave public transport to the real experts, Hilton. You’re out of your depth.

The return to the fold last weekend of Simon “Enoch was right” Heffer was typical of
the genre: “Labour
will let Red Ed lose, then simply dump him” he harrumphed. Mil The
Younger was “dismal”, those “grandees” were considering his fitness
to lead the Labour Party, and “In the
latest opinion poll, Labour has 37 per cent and the Tories 34”. It sounded
convincing to some. But it was weapons grade bullshit.

Then I 'it that Cameron wiv a cosh this big, lads!

The preposterously puffed-up Hefferlump was not alone: Dan
Hodges, the Colonel Nicholson of the Labour Party, told how Miliband was
less popular even than Corporal Clegg, so that was, well, a bit like Robert
Mugabe! Ha ha ha! He’s useless! He got egg on his face! Rubbish! Red Ed! Odd
Ed!

I'm sorry, he hasn't a clue ...

And the perpetually thirsty Paul Staines sneered “If Labour abstains on tomorrow’s vote, can
Ed Miliband seriously be their candidate for Prime Minister in 2015?”,
reflecting those mythical “sources”
available only to The Great Guido, while his odious tame gofer, the flannelled
fool Henry Cole, snarked “Anyone done the
obvious Miliband Syria soundbite yet?”

... and neither has he

What fun they were all having, laying into Miliband for
having the qualities that they had projected onto him. And the problem with
projecting attributes onto people without bothering to find out what they are
really made of is that those doing the projection are likely to look very
foolish when reality intrudes, as it did when Young Dave took
a call from the Labour leader yesterday afternoon.

And then reality has to intrude

Miliband spelt
it out plainly and firmly to Cameron: before Her Majesty’s Opposition would
consider supporting the Government on the Syria business, the UN weapons
inspectors had to complete their work and report back, and then there had to be
another Commons vote. Cameron rejected this. Less than two hours later, he had
caved in, and had been forced to accept Miliband’s position.

Worse, it is
now being reported in the Times –
a Murdoch paper – that someone in Government (for which read the occupants of
either 10 or 11 Downing Street) had railed at Miliband, calling him a “f***ing c***” and a “copper bottomed shit”, thus confirming
that those educated at Eton College and St Paul’s School have moved on from
calling their opponents “cads” and “bounders”.

All of which begs the question: just who is “Weak, weak, weak” here? Who’s the leader
not in control of his own party (there are, apparently, as many as 80 Tory MPs
unhappy with the idea of rushing to launch missiles at Syria)? Who has ended up
looking Prime Ministerial, and who is looking childish and petulant? And why have all these supposedly clued-up
pundits got Miliband so spectacularly wrong?

Yesterday afternoon was the moment that Ed Miliband took a
big step towards 10 Downing Street. And
it was the clueless pundits who got egg on their faces.

Wednesday, 28 August 2013

Considering how free and fearless the press likes to pretend
to be, they are remarkably good at “preparing”
their readers for the possibility that the Government might decide to join some
kind of unspecified coalition, and take some kind of equally unspecified
military action against whoever set off all those chemical munitions in Syria,
which right now looks like the Assad regime.

So both the Mail
and Telegraph have – purely by
coincidence, you understand – told that evidence to back up the chemical
weapons claims is about to be released by the USA. That means it will be
declared “declassified”, which,
considering the howling over Edward Snowden’s disclosures, means this step is
sure to be in the Americans’ interests. The Mailhas
the more dramatic headline.

Meanwhile, Hastings’ fellow pundit Stephen “Miserable Git” Glover is
imploring the Government not to listen to Tone, but they weren’t doing
anyway. Blair is denounced as a “war
monger”, for taking the UK into a conflict that the Mail was behind 100%, right down to joining enthusiastically with
the chorus of adverse comment directed at the French for being insufficiently
bellicose.

The paper achieved this, despite its pathological hatred of
Blair, demonstrating the ease with which it plays both sides of the field. And
it does seem to be softening up the readership into expectation of some kind of
intervention this time around – which it can then mercilessly slag off if
anything fouls up, which, Syria being in the Middle East, is highly likely.

And, in any case, the exercise of preparing the readers may
be a little premature: UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon has
urged patience, and that weapons inspectors presently in Syria should be
allowed to complete their job. With Barack Obama less keen on a scrap that his
predecessor, the advice ignored in 2003 may well hold the line this time round.
But someone, somewhere appears to have decided something.

That’s the message that the military are getting out there. And it’s their missiles.

In the UK, there were, before the passage of the Race
Relations Act, those in business who operated a colour bar: publicans,
hoteliers, landlords were all guilty of that practice. Those from racial
minorities suffered terrible prejudice. But we had nothing on the scale of the
southern states of the USA, where segregation was enforced by law, and often
backed up by the lynch mob.

It was into this arena that Martin
Luther King Jr led the struggle for civil rights – for all citizens. It was
a struggle that would ultimately cost him his life. And that struggle led him
to address a crowd of hundreds of thousands before the Lincoln memorial in
Washington DC fifty years ago today. Much has changed since then: the USA now
has its first African-American President. But not everything.

Much of the vitriol spewed out by the right at Barack Obama –
accusing him of being a communist, not born in the USA, a covert Muslim – is undoubtedly
code for his not being white. So, while Obama may have carried states such as
Florida and Virginia twice, many in the South are still hostile and resentful
so many years after JFK and Lyndon Johnson swept away the baggage of
segregation.

So how is the UK’s “free
and fearless” media commemorating the half-century since Dr King delivered
his speech? There is the cheap and nasty, exemplified
by the Mail’s Ephraim Hardcastle
column, nowadays the domain of Peter McKay, otherwise known as The World’s
Worst Columnist, where the opportunity is taken to have a cheap snark at the
King Estate. Stay classy, McHackey.

And that’s a whole lot better than the joke that is the Express, where the dwindling retinue of
hacks is reduced to combining arthritis cures with yet more milking of the
latest Diana story. Fortunately the Mirror
has restored some credibility to the tabloid cause by making
the King speech one of its lead items, and providing an online version for
its readers to view and hear.

That, after all, is the best and most immediate way to
understand the power of Dr King’s oratory, the way in which he summed up the
plight of African-Americans fifty years ago, and the vision which he spelt out
with great clarity and passion. Everyone should hear that speech: it is one of
the defining moments not just of American history, but of our own, too.

[UPDATE 1625 hours: even with an occasion as the 50th anniversary of Dr King's speech, there has to be a smartarse who wants to dredge up a counter argument to impress those who get uneasy at the sight of darker-skinned people not giving sufficient deference to those of Caucasian appearance, and a superbly wrong-headed example has come from Damian Thompson, clueless pundit of no fixed hair appointment, at the bear pit that is Telegraph blogs.

Dames has, perhaps wisely, knowing the kinds of people who drift around the Tel blogs comments sewer, not allowed comments on his effort, where he tells that Dr King may have borrowed some of the substance of his doctoral thesis - like goodness knows how many others. Then there is an interval of nudge-nudgery where he asserts that King also womanised. But when he sells the pass is at the very end of his post.

"If he'd been a famous white Republican, his reputation would have been comprehensively trashed by historians and the media" protests Dames, to which I call bullshit. Right-wingers, no matter what faults they possessed, are generally deified in death - look at Ayn Rand, an undeserving recipient of accolade if ever there was one. And, while we're on those who were politically active during the 1960s, what about Ronald Reagan? There's another who can do no wrong in death.

Thompson and his pals at Tel blogs may not be paranoid, not that the rotten lefties are coming to get them of course]

There is a very thin dividing line between loyalty and
crawling, and veering across it in no style at all yesterday were the
perpetually thirsty Paul Staines and his obedient rabble at the Guido Fawkes
blog, in what may at first appear a routine piece of knocking copy aimed at
Labour MP Tom Watson, but is in reality a shameless exercise in sucking up to
their new boss.

You want more for that column? Jump a bit higher, Poms!

“Hipster
Watson Makes Friends Down Under” jeered the Fawkes folks, while
recycling an article from The Australian
(prop: guess who) which was, to no surprise at all, slanted to paint Watson’s
visit to Oz in the worst possible light, not that this has anything to do with
the MP having co-authored a book exposing the Murdoch empire’s less than
ethical behaviour, oh no.

“Mr Watson, in
Australia as a self-appointed policeman of election coverage, was caught by
surprise when he appeared on Melbourne ABC Radio with mornings host Jon Faine
yesterday” tells
Murdoch lackey Christian Kerr, while not managing to mention that the only
surprise was that The Australian had
sent a photographer to pursue the Member for West Bromwich East.

This, of course, is the kind of behaviour that, had it been
used on the Fawkes rabble’s favourite Tory MP (yes, it’s her again) Nadine Dorries, would have had them howling “Stalker!” in short order. “He kept darting about trying to avoid The
Australian’s photographer Stuart McEvoy”
whine the Murdoch hacks, while glossing over their crude attempt at harassment.

All that remained was for Rupe’s down under troops to spray
around a few insults – accusing Watson of being overweight and vain, an area
where more than one of the Fawkes folks would be skating on very thin ice – and
there was the complete hatchet job. All that remained for The Great Guido to do
was to recycle it, and add a suitably derogatory comment from a partisan
talking head.

Who might that be? Well, how about Mark Textor, business
partner of good old Lynt, of whom we have already heard? Textor was
directly abusive, as befits the level of subtlety inherent in the campaign modus operandi of Himself and Croz: this
was then eagerly relayed by the Fawkes rabble as the words of an “Impartial observer”. That’s impartial,
as in not really impartial at all.

All of which adds up to another shameless display of
grovelling at the feet of Uncle Rupe: after all, if the Fawkes folks want to
retain that lucrative column in the Sunday edition of the Sun, they need not only to jump when their new master tells them
to, but also ask “how high?” as well.

Tuesday, 27 August 2013

Another day, another lame attempt to rubbish the HS2 project
which, like so many of the other lame attempts to rubbish the HS2 project, has
been based on no analysis at all, save for the director general of the
Institute of Directors (IoD) to airily wave his hand and tell
anyone that is listening that it is a “grand
folly” and that “the business case
... simply is not there”.

High-speed rail: a quiet scene at Paris Gare de Lyon

Do we get any facts and figures? You jest. That kind of
detail ended when the IEA “report”,
the one that pretended the cost of HS2 could reach £80 billion, got
rumbled as another work of fiction yet more shameless than the stream of
knocking copy that had gone before it. But this does not deter the
well-organised, but fact-free, chorus of voices demanding cancellation.

One pundit congratulates her own side ...

Among these is the supposedly thoughtful Ruth Lea, who
congratulates her former employer on not volunteering any argument against HS2
other than bluster. She is joined by MEP and occasional Tory Dan, Dan the
Oratory Man, who demands “Instead of
firehosing cash at the HS2 boondoggle, why not spend a twentieth of the sum on
giving everyone rural high-speed broadband?”

... while another practices for his next Fox News appearancee

Yes, sadly, Hannan hasn’t figured out that construction hasn’t
started. And, as the man said, there’s more: the humourless Matthew Sinclair, chief
non-job holder at the so-called Taxpayers’ Alliance (TPA), approvingly quoted
the IoD propaganda and called it “damning”,
which is rather easier than having to stand up any of the routinely dishonest analysis
he and his pals have been churning out.

Ah, once a spinner ...

But pride of place has to go to Mark Wallace, formerly of
both TPA and IoD, and now at ConservativeHome, who has penned “Is
there anyone left who still supports HS2?” today. Things, he tells,
just keep getting worse for HS2. They do, Wal? Do tell. Well, the IEA says so (debunked),
the treasury says so (but not officially, for some reason), and Tim Montgomerie
says so too (addressed HERE)!

... always a spinner

There are then several paragraphs of padding, before Wallace
suggests we build more airports instead, and declares rail technology obsolete
because TPA stooge Allister Heath at City
AM says so: yes, self-driving cars are the future (addressed HERE).
Did anyone call for a chorus of “Monorail”?
But the worst thing about Wallace’s piece is that, in sixteen paragraphs, he
fails to address one point.

That point can be put plainly, and directly: the rationale
for HS2 is to provide more capacity to move people, and freight, between London
and the South-East, and the North of England (and potentially beyond). Neither
the IoD, nor the ASI, nor the IEA, nor the TPA, have provided a satisfactory
alternative. So let’s see that point being addressed, rather than the attempt
to shout down debate.

That, of course, would mean thinking positively. So don’t expect it any time soon.

[UPDATE1 1940 hours: Mark Wallace has responded to my post by showing that addressing the central issue at the heart of the HS2 project - capacity - is beyond his intellectual capacity.

And there, folks, it proof, if proof were needed, of how much the HS2 bashing fraternity really know about the whole business, and how seriously they take the continued economic well-being of the UK]

[UPDATE2 28 August 1155 hours: it now appears that Mark Wallace's assertion that "HS2's supporters have all lowered their hands" was yet another example of his tendency to veer from spin to forthright dishonesty, as ConHome has had no problem finding a Tory MP, Paul Maynard (Blackpool North and Cleveleys) to give his support for the project.

Zelo Street regulars may recall the example from last September where Wallace had suggested the Derbyshire Unemployed Workers' Centres (DUWC) were using public funds to pay for the notorious Margaret Thatcher T-shirts. This was due to a combination of Wallace not bothering to put the question to DUWC - which I did - and his failure to understand such things as audit trails.

I would hate to think that Wal made his assertion about HS2 supporters in the same way - through not bothering to ask around beforehand. That, of course, would be both shameless, and inexcusably bad practice, and that would never do]

“If the revelations about the N.S.A. surveillance were broken by Time,
CNN or The New York Times, executives there would already be building new
shelves to hold all thePulitzer
Prizesand Peabodies they expected ... Instead,
the journalists and organizations who did that work find themselves under
attack, not just from a government bent on keeping its secrets, but from
friendly fire by fellow journalists. What are we thinking?”

Except, of course, that journalists do not bring violence
and destruction, but merely seek to shine a light on those areas that some
would rather keep dark. The security services may have helped us beat the
Nazis. But now we are not fighting the Nazis: the overreach of the state
surveillance apparatus means that the press and its journalists are struggling
to maintain their very freedom.

That is why it’s not just about the Guardian. It’s about all of us.

[UPDATE 28 August 1430 hours: the World Association of Newspapers and News Publishers (WAN-IFRA), which represents around 18,000 news publications worldwide, has now written to Young Dave, calling the Government's behaviour towards the Guardian - which involved legal threats and the destruction of two computers - "deeply regrettable", and showing concern over press freedom.

The organisation, moreover, called the detention of David Miranda under Schedule 7 of the 2000 Terrorism Act "outrageous and deeply disturbing". For some reason, many UK publications are not reporting this news, and it has fallen to sources like the HuffPost to let us know.

Clearly, those representatives of all those thousands of publications understand that, as I pointed out above, it is not just about the Guardian. Exactly how Government cheerleaders in the UK press and elsewhere explain that one away will be a joy to behold]

If only he had not spent all that time asleep during
sessions of the European Parliament, UKIP MEP Roger Helmer might have been a
little quicker at spotting a flagrantly dishonest headline when he saw one.
Instead, he has converted himself, in just one Tweet, from mildly controversial
man of the people to a combination of gullible fool and certified laughing
stock.

Not engaging brain before shooting gob off

“Wow! Estonia becomes
the first country to get all its power from shale gas ... and much cheaper than
Russian gas” he enthused, which will raise a few eyebrows, not least in
Estonia, because there is no shale gas extraction there. None. Not a sausage.
Nada. Bugger all. And, had Helmer
bothered to read beyond the headline of Ambrose Evans-Pritchard’s article, he
would have found out for himself.

That headline, “Estonia
becomes self-sufficient on shale gas boom”, was fraudulent. What
Evans-Pritchard is describing is the use of oil
shale, a rock which can be dug out of the ground, pulverised and then
heated to yield energy. It is a particularly crude and inefficient way of doing
so, and the technology was bequeathed Estonia by the former Soviet Union.

Lots left over? They import natural gas ...

Moreover, the idea that there is lots left over after using
oil shale for power generation is an interesting one. The country, certainly
until 2012, imported
all its natural gas – from Russia – despite Evans-Pritchard suggesting
otherwise. Estonia also
imports electricity. It also imports crude oil.
So the Telegraph piece is about
rather more than a dishonest headline.

... they import electricity ...

What the Tel is
also not letting its readers know is that Estonia produced
as much as 17% of its power from renewable sources as far back as 2004.
That’s rather better than many other EU member states, such as, oh I dunno, the
UK for instance. And the continued use of oil shale in Estonia is
controversial, which the Tel article
manages to mention towards the end.

... and they import crude oil

As a former environment manager for Estonia’s state power
company put it, “We inherited this
infrastructure from the Soviet Union so there was some justification at first,
but now it doesn’t make any sense. We are linked to electricity from Finland
and we can offset wind intermittency with Nordic hydro-power. We should be
switching everything to offshore wind and biomass”.

He also pointed out that, while he was in that job, he was
his country’s biggest polluter. Energy from oil shale, despite recent
improvements in filtering out the worst emissions, is not exactly a clean
technology. But none of this has concerned Roger Helmer, who has seen the
headline and allowed the Tel,
together with it being the kind of news he wants to see, to con him something rotten.

Something to think
about when you even consider voting for these clowns.

Monday, 26 August 2013

Sometimes a story comes along that the press really ought to
think about before rushing to follow the herd. And, if the warning signs are so
obvious – like part of it combining falsehood and misinformation – one might
expect the press to think once more. On top of that, when the source is part of
the Murdoch empire, it might be best to think for a third time. But that is not
today’s way.

So when a story came along suggesting that members
(literally) of the England cricket team were deployed after hours last night to
urinate on the pitch at the Kennington Oval, part of the why-oh-why brigade
rushed to lift it, instead of checking it out against what was known. For
starters, the photo accompanying the claims showed the players sitting on the
outfield, and no more.

Moreover, the story had come via News Limited, which is the
Australian outpost of Rupert Murdoch’s empire: Rupe owns well over half the Aussie
print media, and right now it is being used, when not spinning tales about test
cricket, to try and swing the upcoming General Election there in favour of the
Liberal-led coalition (the Liberal Party in Australia is the equivalent of the
Tories in the UK, only nastier).

So it’s come from Rupe’s down-under troops, it’s not been
backed up by another source or any photo or video evidence, and here’s the
false premise: “It would have been the
only moisture applied to the pitch for quite some time given the deliberate dry
and dusty nature of the pitches presented in this Test series to blunt
Australia’s pace attack and aid spinner Graeme Swann, the highest wicket-taker
in the series”.

Australia were the only team with a pace attack? Jimmy
Anderson and Stuart Broad forgotten already? What a load of crap. But the Maily Telegraphhas
swallowed the story whole, blustering “ECB
urged to examine claims”. At least the
Mail has qualified its story with
“accused of act ... according to an
Australian journalist”. The Mirrorhas
gone with “The Herald Sun claim”.

The Australians lost the test series, and had it not been
for the deteriorating light, they’d have lost the Oval test as well. The Aussie
press, and especially the Murdoch part of it, wants to claw back some credibility,
however desperate the means. But the really shameful thing is that some UK
media outlets, and especially the Telegraph,
have allowed themselves to run along behind the herd without engaging brain.

Don’t trust the Murdoch empire, no matter what country its copy comes from.

Now, this is not the first time that Bozza has
complained about migration restrictions, which he sees as potentially
harming the competitiveness of London, versus other major cities such as, well,
anywhere in the rest of the EU, for starters. The thought that the dastardly
Germans or the garlic-crunching French may instead attract talent to Frankfurt
am Main or Paris is a recurring Bozza theme.

But today’s rambling, in the column for which the Maily Telegraph will have bunged him the
usual £5,000 in “chicken feed”,
suggests that the UK should relax its immigration rules for Australians,
because they speak English: “As I walk
around Sydney today, I see advertisements for the recipes of Jamie Oliver. I
meet people who watch Top Gear”. And they’ve gone metric. Your point is?

There’s an undercurrent in Bozza’s argument which he never
really gets round to addressing, and it’s this: there are many other countries
around the world where the first language is English (or you can take it as
read that those educated there to graduate level will be fluent), and they’ve
heard of both Jamie Oliver and Top Gear. And many of those countries are also
part of the Commonwealth.

Those that are not part of the Commonwealth – the USA,
mainly – are English speaking because of their historical connection with the
UK. So if Bozza wants there to be an exemption to current immigration rules for
the English speaking, he’s going to open the UK up to a potentially far larger
influx than a few Aussies who want to teach here – or all those Romanians the
tabloids like to scare readers about.

Is he going to suggest that? Is he buggery. This is just
another “look over there” device to
allow him to bluster his way through another money-generating enterprise. And
his attempt to pin the UK’s immigration policy for non-EU nationals on “Brussels” won’t wash, either: “I suppose there might be some objection from
the EU – but they should be told firmly to stuff it”. Bullshit. You just
made that up.

France makes its own arrangements with former colonies and
other Francophone countries. Spain and Portugal do likewise (the latter only
having divested itself of the last remnants of its own empire after the 1974
revolution). Bozza really does talk the most appalling drivel on the EU, and
what is worse, he knows it. And his migration idea, taken to its logical
conclusion, is a non-starter.

But it impresses Telegraph
readers for a few hours, so that’s all
right, then.

Many people start their adult life on the left of the
political spectrum and then gradually drift to the right. Some drift rather
less than gradually, and rather more obviously, and this tendency has been
exemplified by the return to full-throttle ranting of Melanie “not just Barking but halfway to Upminster”
Phillips, who has today seen terrible things in, er, the Girl Guides.

Not even a little fair and balanced

Wait, what? You read that correctly. Mad Mel has taken exception
at the idea of no longer pledging to “love
my God”. How could they? So out comes the long handle: “An
unholy war in the Guides and why we must ALL fight the secular bigots”
screams the headline. Oh, and Guides are no longer pledging to serve “my country”, but only “my community”. This is yet more grist to
the Mel mill.

Now, some may look on and respond “Meh” at the idea of no longer pledging allegiance to one or other
of organised religion’s various deities, or trying to relate to a “community” rather than a “country”, but for Mel, if there is no
organised religion, then there is no trust. Yes, this is another example of
taking personal opinion and allowing it to morph into alleged fact.

Mel helps this process along by contrasting religion with “an ideology which brooks no dissent”,
which sounds very much like Herself Personally Now. She also shows signs of not
understanding where society is at right now: organised religion, and the belief
in one or other deity, is very much a minority sport. But Mel does know that
much of this is down to political correctness. And we know what that means.

“‘Political
correctness’ is not remotely liberal at all, but viciously oppressive. It is
simply a mechanism for re-ordering the world according to a particular dogma —
and thus inescapably stifles all dissent. Innately hostile to traditional morality, it paves the way for a secular
Inquisition in which today’s Torquemadas are the ideologues of such group
rights — and it is Christians and other religious believers who are the
heretics to be silenced by force”. Wibble. And. As the man said,
there’s more.

“It is, indeed, the principal weapon of unholy war wielded by the forces
of militant secularism, which are intent upon destroying the Judeo-Christian
basis of western morality. It supplants traditional morality and the concepts
of right and wrong, truth and lies by a creed which says in effect, ‘Whatever
is right for you is right’”.

Yes, the Guides have been taken over by “aggressive secularism” and “hyper-individualism”! It’s all “about tramping underfoot the beliefs of
others”! There are “secular zealots”!
Society’s demise is being hastened! Bloody hell, there’s some strong stuff out
there in the “legal highs”
marketplace, and no mistake. Mad Mel’s had a summer break, but all it’s done is
made her more screamingly intolerant.

The world moves on. Organisations move with it. That is all.
Get over it, Mel!

Sunday, 25 August 2013

Last weekend’s seizing on an accusation about the death of Diana, Princess of Wales
by the Express was never going to be
allowed to generate just one front page splash. And, with yesterday’s edition
reduced to telling readers that the bank holiday weather might feature both
sunshine and rain, there was clearly a need for something a little racier to
bring in the punters.

And so it came to pass, with “Diana
Death: The Two Mystery Cars”, telling that the Military Police are
investigating the latest accusation, as if this means it’s rather more serious.
Sadly, it means nothing of the sort: the claim of SAS involvement was made by a
then serving soldier, those reporting it did so to his commanding officer, and
so the MP are the ones who will take on the enquiry.

Readers are briefly told that Henri Paul may have been “set up” (he was not in a fit state to
drive, something that has been established beyond doubt, except of course for
the Express) before talking about two
mystery vehicles, which were supposedly in the area of the crash at the time.
And a photo is captioned “Diana turns to
look back. Had she felt a bump from another car?” At the speed Paul was
driving? No chance.

Then there are a number of witness accounts, but there is no
need to go beyond the very first to put this one to bed. Someone staying in a
hotel overlooking the entrance to the Pont de l’Alma underpass “heard the noise of an almighty crash
followed immediately by the sound of skidding tyres and then immediately a
further very loud crash”. Two vehicles, then? No, just the one.

The Mercedes being driven by Henri Paul – and remember, it
was a heavier than standard model – had struck
a support pillar in the underpass (first impact), then spun and struck the
nearside wall (second impact). The initial impact, at an estimated speed of
105km/h (65mph) is what caused fatal injuries to three of the four occupants.
So that’s the two crashes dealt with.

The witness quoted by the Express had actually seen nothing (which figures, as the crash
happened inside the underpass), then returned to bed, but shortly afterwards
heard more sounds, so looked out of the window “to see that a small dark vehicle had completed its turn into Rue Jean
Goujon immediately followed by a larger white vehicle”. They were
travelling close together, and moving very quickly.

So I examined my Paris street map, and found that it would
be possible to approach the Rue Jean Goujon from five different roads,
none of which is that which passes through the Pont de l’Alma underpass. And
the Express’ first witness had heard
the crash, returned to bed, and only later saw the two vehicles which readers
are being expected to connect to the crash that killed Diana.

That’s desperate and lame even for the Express. Another Benchmark of
Excellence!

For starters, Lord Justice Leveson has completed his Inquiry
into the “Culture, Practice and Ethics of the
Press”. It would not be up to him as to whether there was to be any
further inquiry. Moreover, the list from the Serious Organised Crime Agency
(SOCA) is just that: it does not form part of any investigation, and is
therefore unlikely to be of evidential standard.

That means it would not get very far if tested in a court of
law. But that is not to say that the Mail
should not be applauded for going after potential lawbreaking. So what have
they uncovered? “The world’s biggest
accountancy firm Deloitte, powerful banks Credit Suisse and Chase Manhattan,
and giant law firm Richards Butler, now part of Reed Smith –which represented
Gordon Brown at the Leveson Inquiry – are all on a secret list belonging to a
corrupt private detective”.

A secret list, with names on it? Very Dad’s Army. But do go on: “A Mail
on Sunday investigation has also
established the rogue investigators jailed last year for illegally accessing
information by ‘blagging’ appeared to be
linked to international solicitors’ firms Herbert Smith –which represented
former RBS boss Fred Goodwin – and Clyde & Co”. But only “appeared to be linked”.

But, as the man said, there’s more: “Last night a senior Westminster source indicated that all six firms are
on the classified Serious Organised Crime Agency list currently locked away in
a safe opposite the House of Commons”. The plot thickens folks, and not a
granule of Bisto in sight!

So readers are given the impression by this stage that lots
of big companies have been commissioning some Very Bad Things, that these are
worse Very Bad Things than the Fourth Estate ever got up to, and that Leveson
could, and should, do something about it, but isn’t doing, because they’re all
ganging up on the poor hacks and editors and it’s rotten and totally unfair.

This is total bullshit. Leveson does not have the power to
reopen his Inquiry or start another one. What was in the SOCA report wouldn’t
persuade a court of law. And what’s this, in the eighth paragraph of the Mail’s piece? “There is no evidence that those named knowingly employed the
rogue detectives in criminal activity on their behalf”. The Mail wants an Inquiry on the basis of no
sodding evidence.

The sheer brass neck of the Fourth Estate in a nutshell. No change there, then.

What is not in question is that two staff from Westbourne Communications, which offers a
skill set that includes lobbying, have been seconded to HS2 Limited, the company which
is developing and promoting HS2. The company is wholly owned by the Department
for Transport (DfT). This has been sufficient for our old friends the HS2
Action Alliance (HS2AA), named because it doesn’t want any action, to cry foul.

On top of the secondments, HS2 Ltd paid Westbourne £80,000
in the year to July. And the DfT has paid Westbourne £24,000. So the shout has
gone up: this is held to have been taxpayer funded lobbying. Government, or
Government owned company, pays firm that does lobbying. Therefore Government is
paying said firm to lobby it, and hence the conclusion.

Where we have heard this one before is with the so-called
Taxpayers’ Alliance (TPA), who, back in August 2009, produced another in their
series of dubiously researched “reports”
detailing £38 million of
payments by Government to firms which, like Westbourne Communications,
offered a skill set that included lobbying. But there was a problem with the
TPA’s logic.

Nobody argued that the payments were made, but what the TPA
did not demonstrate is what the payments were for. The firms concerned did not
just perform lobbying. The TPA did not show what even one of the payments was actually for. At the time, Mick Fealty
of Slugger O’Toole fame called
out the TPA, to subsequent amusement as Matthew Sinclair failed to address
the issue.

But the TPA is not present on this occasion, so why is their
“dodgy dossier” mentioned? Ah well.
The TPA and HS2AA worked closely together on attacking HS2, with the latter
being heavily promoted in the TPA’s knocking copy. And HS2AA was no stranger to
the kind of easy dishonesty that characterises TPA propaganda, with the
“Bradford is bigger than Edinburgh”
whopper a prime example.

Today’s Indy piece is just recycling the TPA’s “taxpayer funded lobbying” line – no proof
of such a practice is offered, save the usual nudge-nudgery, and none will be – along with accusations that
the Westbourne secondments amount to the same thing, which will also not be
backed up with any evidence. So into the maelstrom of lame knocking copy is
thrown a little more. Nobody should be surprised.

And the main reason for HS2 – capacity – is not addressed. That’s not good enough.